photographer and fingerprint man with him and he motioned them now to go ahead with their gruesome work.
'Perhaps,' said Sloan slowly. 'Perhaps not.'
'Not a coincidence anyway,' said Blake.
'No. Someone knew.'
'Many people realise you wanted this word or two with him?' Digger's questions were usually obliquely phrased.
'Enough.' Sloan took a deep breath. 'A girl who said she saw him in Calleford yesterday afternoon.' Henrietta had probably been right about that, now he came to think of it, but how significant it was he couldn't sort out. Not for the moment. 'Her solicitor. He knew, of course. He's called Ar-bican.'
'That'll be Waind, Arbican & Waind, in Ox Lane,' said Blake. 'There's only him left in the firm now.'
'And a young man called Bill Thorpe…' He hesitated. 'I can't make up my mind about him.'
'What's the trouble?'
'Too ardent for my liking.'
'It's not whether you like it, old chap,' grinned Blake. 'It's if the lady likes it.'
'She's got quite enough on her plate as it is,' said Sloan primly.
And he told Digger the whole story.
'A proper mix-up, isn't it?' Blake said appreciatively. 'Rather you than me.'
'Thank you. Crosby, if you want to be sick go outside.'
'Who else knew you wanted Jenkins?' asked Blake, who was nowhere near as casual as he sounded.
Sloan frowned. 'The Rector of Larking and his wife. Meyton's their name.'
'Lesson One,' quoted Blake. 'The cloth isn't always what it…'
'It is this time.'
'Oh, really? And who else is in the know?'
'No one that I know of. There's a James Heber Hibbs, Esquire…'
'Gent?'
'Landed Gent,' said Sloan firmly, 'of The Hall, Larking, but he doesn't know about Jenkins. Not unless the girl's told him and I don't quite see when she would have done. Owns about half the village if you ask me.'
'For Hibbs read Nibs,' said Digger frivolously. 'Has he got a missus?'
'Yes, but you call her madam, my lad.'
'And their connection with this case?'
'Obscure,' said Sloan bitterly.
'Anyone else?'
Sloan hesitated. 'There's a certain Major Hocklington but…'
'But what?'
'He might be dead.'
'I see. Well, when you've made your mind up…'
'He might have had the M.C. and the D.S.O., too.'
'That'll be a great help in finding him,' murmured Digger affably, 'but I'd rather he had a scar on his left cheek, if it's all the same to you.'
'There's always the possibility,' said Sloan, 'that he had an agent.'
'If he's dead, for instance?' Blake moved out of the photographer's line of vision.
'That's right.'
Blake pointed the same way as the photographer's camera. 'He's not going to tell you. Not now.'
'No,' said Sloan morbidly, 'though, oddly enough, I'm after his blood too.'
It was something after eight o'clock that evening when Inspector Sloan, supported by a still rather wan- looking Constable Crosby, reported back to Superintendent Leeyes in person at the Berebury Police Station.
'As pretty a kettle of fish, sir,' Sloan said, 'as you'll find anywhere.'
'Suicide or murder?' demanded Leeyes.
But it wasn't as simple as that.
Dr. Dabbe had got to Cullingoak at a speed which, as far as Sloan was concerned, didn't bear thinking about. He was well known as the fastest driver in Calleshire and nothing that his arch enemy, Inspector Harpe of Traffic Division, could do seemed to slow him down at all.
At the house Dr. Dabbe had met his opposite number, the Consultant Pathologist for East Calleshire, Dr. Soriey McPherson. The two doctors had treated each other with an elaborate and ritual courtesy which reminded Sloan of nothing so much as the courtship display of a pair of ducks at mating time.
With professional punctiliousness each had invited the other's opinion on every possible point.
The upshot—after, in Sloan's private opinion, a great deal of unnecessary billing and cooing—was that Cyril Edgar Jenkins had probably been shot in the head by someone sitting opposite him across the table, who had pulled out a revolver and leaned forward.
'We can't be certain, of courrrse'—Dr. Soriey McPherson had rolled his 'r's' in an intimidating way—'but it looks as if the rrevolver was placed in deceased's rright hand after death.'
'I see, Doctor.'
'Suicide,' he went on, 'was doubtless meant to be in-ferrrred.'
Sloan thought the 'r's' were never going to stop.
'We'll be needing a wee look at the poor chap's fingerprints on the revolver handle. D'you not agree, Dabbe?'
Dr. Dabbe had agreed. The powder burns, the position of the shot, the body, the revolver, all indicated murder made to look like suicide.
Sloan said all this to the Superintendent 'But only inferred, sir. Not proved yet.'
Leeyes snorted in a dissatisfied way. 'Except, then, that he's dead, we're no further forward…'
Sloan said nothing. If Leeyes cared to regard that as progress there was nothing he could say.
'What about the blood?' said the Superintendent.
'Dr. Dabbe's grouping it now. He's going to ring.'
Leeyes drummed a pencil on his desk. 'You say no one in Cullingoak saw or heard anything?'
'No one. The people in the house next door on one side were out and the woman in the other always has a lay down after her lunch. Anyone could walk in the back, just like we did. He did have a job in Calleford, by the way. She confirms that.'
'No other children?'
'No sir, not that she knew of.'
Leeyes grunted. 'And Major Hocklington—where have you got with him?'
'The Army are doing what they can, but…'
'I know, Sloan. Saturday night's not the best time.'
'No, sir. If he were a serving officer now it would be quite simple.'
'I presume,' coldly, 'you checked the Army List days ago.'
'Yes, sir.'
'So we have to wait.' Leeyes wasn't good at waiting.
'Yes, sir.'
'And our other friends?'
Sloan turned back the pages of his notebook though he knew well enough what was written there. 'Bill Thorpe excused himself pretty smartly after the inquest and went off just before Arbican went back to Calleford.'
'Went off where?'
'Larking, he says. He wouldn't have lunch in Berebury with the Meytons and Henrietta.'
'Why not?'
'Said he hadn't time. Had to get back to the farm.'
'And did he?'
Sloan said carefully. 'No one happened to see him at Shire Oak—which, of course, is not to say he wasn't
